Daniel Gross of Apple leaves to become Y Combinator’s newest partner | Hacker News Reader

Daniel Gross of Apple leaves to become Y Combinator’s newest partner

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333 pointsdwynings131 comments

There does seem to be something interesting about how less successful* YC alumni now seem to be becoming partners. And, of course, Sam Altman himself is the ultimate case of this.

And, on the one hand, it certainly makes sense. All of these people have been through the YC process and used it to achieve a measure of success. Also, the Drew Houston's of the world are generally available to be partners precisely because of their success (they have companies to run, after all).

On the other hand, it can seem a little incestuous, and that's certainly something to guard against given the nature of tech in general. Too often it seems like organizations become victims of their own success precisely through this sort of "inbreeding".

*: "less successful" meant very charitably as they're only less successful when compared to i.e. Dropbox and are certainly more successful than most YC founders, let alone all founders.

e.g., not i.e., you meant. but, yes!

Yes, thank you :-)

> Too often it seems like organizations become victims of their own success precisely through this sort of "inbreeding".

This is definitely a concern with organizations like Teach for America, where they are selecting the students with the best grades to teach at schools and eventually be responsible for creating school policy. This sort of selection has the potential to have a huge negative impact on students that are already being poorly served by the system.

With YC it's less of an issue, since it would be hurting YC itself more than the entrepreneurs. E.g. if YC is funding bad startups then it's going to hurt their returns, but if YC doesn't fund your specific startup then it's not going to prevent you from going out and being successful.

I have no doubt that Daniel is going to do an awesome job as partner. But regardless, let's not forget that it's at least 10x if not 100x harder to be a good VC than a good entrepreneur, so don't go too hard on YC. :-)

> let's not forget that it's at least 10x if not 100x harder to be a good VC than a good entrepreneur

Why do you say that?

Because every year as an entrepreneur you might need to be in the top five or ten companies to have founded a unicorn, but realistically you probably only need to be in the top 500 or 1,000 companies to have a good life outcome. E.g. if it's only you and your cofounder and you haven't raised any money, even if you get literally zero users you can still potentially get acqui-hired for $5M if you're both high-level devs. Obviously not what you were going for, but still a great life outcome for something that only took a year or two. (Unless you had an unusually large opportunity cost in starting the business or are coming from a large previous success or something.)

Whereas for a VC, in order to be successful you really have to invest in one of the ten unicorns that gets created every year. But that's not the bad part, the bad part is that 9 of those 10 are probably going to raise their series A from the same firm (Sequoia). Which means that you either need to invest before there is any evidence of traction and gamble on getting super lucky, or else first spend decades building up your reputation to the point where the biggest startups will consistently let you into their rounds as additional capital.

When investors all talk about how much better it is to be an entrepreneur they're not just blowing smoke up your ass. There is way more capital than there are good startups, and it's a brutally efficient market where the odds are very much not in their favor. YC is consistently taking a good percentage of the best seed-stage startups that exist, and think about how much everyone complains about how shitty they all are every six months.

Agree with certain aspects, but the risk-reward is clearly easier for VCs who can hedge their bets across multiple startups and earn nice salaries regardless(even after ignoring the carry). As an entrepreneur, you can't hedge bets and unless you have a had a huge B round are probably work at 50% of your market salary.

> the risk-reward is clearly easier for VCs who can hedge their bets across multiple startups and earn nice salaries regardless

That's only a small percentage of investors who have basically already won though. Right now there is a local startup accelerator for pretty much every city worldwide with more than 250k residents, plus at least one for every major college town (e.g. Madison or Ithaca). So there are easily 500+ total, maybe even a couple thousand at this point depending on what you count. The vast majority of those have made dozens of investments without even a single major exit.

Most of the folks drawing a salary are getting paid far less than you'd make as a decent developer, and many aren't even getting paid at all. The folks on 20-minute VC talking about how they got started after making a few million as hobby investors are about as representative of the average investor's experience as Mark Zuckerberg is of the average junior PHP developer's experience.

> it's a brutally efficient market

I disagree. You're assuming that every startup gets funded. I think this is wrong. Just because there are lots of terrible startups that get funding, doesn't mean there aren't great startups that never get funded. I'm sure you're familiar with the story of how AirBnB wouldn't exist if it weren't for Y Combinator. Or how Y Combinator stopped operating out of Boston because DropBox couldn't get funded there.

I understand why VC is the way it is, and I think it's a big problem (unless you're Sequoia). Everybody is focused on derisking, which makes sense. But most take it too far, and look for external signalling and develop a herdlike mentality. There is absolutely an opportunity for investors to take on bigger risks with bigger upsides - that is part of Peter Thiel's strategy. And I think Marc Andreessen largely made a16z into what it is today by doing one thing extremely well - thinking for himself.

The rules for startup investing are very different for hardware than they are for software. And the world is looking for the next Apple. Who is going to fund it? I'll bet good money it's not Sequoia. I also bet Sequoia won't invest in the next big energy company, or the next big space company, or a company that wins a sizable market for self-driving cars. There are plenty of opportunities for a new VC to make money, you just need to think outside of the box.

Edit: Just wanted to add I think you make a lot of good points, but I think there is an opportunity for more great VCs to exist.

Since you seem to measure the difficulty by the odds only(ignoring the sweat/time put in by the entrepreneur), then I'd argue that being a VC is 10x to 100x easier than being a good Powerball (lottery) player. :)

I have to say I have been baffled why Sam Altman is held in such high regard by YC and its community. He co-founded Loopt in the first batch of YC. It was sold years later for less than the money the investors had put into it. So it basically failed and lost money. Except for the co-founders, they walk away with a few million each. Nice pay for at best an average performance.

He then becomes CEO of YC. But YC is already a well established and successful outfit at that point so there is hardly any risk involved. The chief requirement is just to not screw up a good thing. So far he has managed to do that.

Along the way he makes many more millions because as a YC insider he gets to invest at the earliest stage for the best looking start-ups.

I have nothing against the man and I do not begrudge him his millions but lets stop thinking he is a genius. He is an average entrepreneur that has had an amazing slice of luck by being in on YC at its start and making the most of it. I'm sure he is a smart, hard working and a nice bloke. But he is not a genius.

What if you were made CEO of Apple tomorrow? It's already well established and successful, so there is hardly any risk involved there?

Yes, there is.

https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

Doesn't your assumption (leading YC is hard) rise the question why he got that job even more, if we assume he performed average in his startup and lost investors money?

The shortcomings of this noxious but common "prove you're a genius by your ROI" attitude is exactly why Y Combinator has been as successful as it has been.

There is no mystery here. PG, JL, TLB and RTM obviously thought highly of many people when entering YC, even more highly when they got to see them up close, and even more so as they worked closely with them. They see their value. And that's why Sam Altman is the CEO of YC.

Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

>Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

Not quite. Many of the best startups choose to apply to YC because of this perception that YC is so good. Startups are not like stocks, investing in them is not something you can just click a button to do. So regular 'beat the market' reasoning doesn't apply.

Once a place is considered a great place to take good ideas, a relatively stupid person can pick between them pretty easily and get a good outcome. Because so many good companies think to apply to YC, YC has a pretty good success rate, thus perpetuating the idea that YC is so good.

> Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market. It could never work otherwise.

Doesnt match

> It was sold years later for less than the money the investors had put into it.

No contradiction. YC likes Altman more than the market liked Altman's company. YC sees more potential than was manifest in that startup.

I have no opinion on his brilliance, just pointing out there's no mismatch.

> Believe it or not, the YC partners and leadership are actually better judges of ability than the market.

And how would you measure that?

> I'm sure he is a smart, hard working and a nice bloke. But he is not a genius.

I'd extend this observation to 99% of founders and CEOs.

> The chief requirement is just to not screw up a good thing.

I think Sam went way beyond that and took big steps with things like open ai

> a YC insider he gets to invest at the earliest stage for the best looking start-ups

Sam was investing himself before joining YC as CEO. I can find only https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/hydrazine-capital/in... but there might be some great investments missing from there.

Disclosure: YC founder and fan of Sam's work as CEO

>baffled why Sam Altman is held in such high regard

I don't know him personally but Paul Graham does and thinks him exceptional so in absence of other info I'll trust take his word - http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Altman became president of the YC partnership, with a newly created board of overseeers. Nowhere near to a CEO that makes all the decisions by himself.

Yes, it seems that YC is becoming full of optimists. People who likely have a severe personal bias towards believing that "it always works out in the end".

This attitude is difficult to keep as you get older and you learn about reality.

Obviously when times are good, you want to be lead by optimists who will take bigger risks.

I'm convinced that this optimism bias is what drives "the business cycle."

Well, assume that YC hires sanely and competently. How would it hire? What kinds of people?

First, someone they've had occasion to judge in depth. Alumni are that. A modest exit and the path to it may show competence, and YC is in a good spot to judge it.

Second, someone who's lived through both sunny and rainy days at a actual startup. YC participants definitely are startups, and a bad or moderate exit indicates that someone has felt difficult times.

Third, people who've just folded their startup or executed a modest exit may be on the market.

AFAICT people like Sam Altman ought to comprise a fairly large pool of attractive and suitable candidates.

In sports, "less successful" athletes tend to dominate coaching and management. Maybe there's something to it.

Good for him. I personally got to work with Daniel in the past (Apple) and I must say that it was not a great experience. I know it's never easy for acqui-hires to get into the company culture and try to make the transition happen smoothly... but in his case it was more of an attitude and personality clash. He did get promoted though so I'm sure despite his attitude, he had the good habit to get stuff done!

Lately Apple stories on HN all seem to have comment chains that are isomorphic to this exchange:

Guy 1: Jesus Christ what a red flag at Apple, should we be worried?

Guy 2: Apple makes a superbillion dollars therefore concern is impossible.

It's very weird to see over and over. It's like the way pro-life and pro-choice people talk past each other in their reasoning.

I'm not sure how isomorphic the comments are. Perhaps I'm just not understanding your meaning correctly. Do you mean to say that the opinion of Guy 1 and Guy 2 are the same in essence?

How much talent is Apple losing today?

They have 115,000 employees. Losing two won't make a big difference (yes, I know those two are important, but still).

I think it is disingenuous to say that the lead programmer of Swift and Director of Machine Learning won't make a difference.

I know if my company lost two important people in one week would be very significant.

I have faith a company like Apple can replace them with people every bit as talented and competent.

It's not always that simple. Execs like this take entire teams of talented subordinates with them. The headline focuses on one person but the real brain drain occurs when that person turns around and starts to poach the absolute best talent from their previous orgs. I've found recruiting and hiring at the very top to be as much (or more) about the individual exec/manager than the company itself.

No one said anything about it being simple, just that it can be done when you have the resources and reputation of a company like Apple.

For what it's worth, Chris Lattner specifically said in his farewell email [1] that "we don’t expect it to impact day-to-day operations in the Swift Core Team in any significant way." If you take him at his word, presumably that would mean the brain drain will be a nonevent.

[1] https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo...

Or it may just mean that the brain drain won't have a direct day-to-day impact, just an indirect, growing decay in capacity and capability as people leave and the team struggles to replace them.

FWIW, a lot of companies have non-solications in place to try and prevent this kind of behavior. They're far from fool-proof, and there is nothing stopping an employee from leaving of their own volition, but I would guess both of them have some sort of agreement in place not to poach talent directly.

What you're describing is not only illegal, but also something for which Apple recently contributed to a half-billion dollar settlement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

a lot of companies have non-solications in place to try and prevent this kind of behavior

If you know of other companies engaging in backroom nonsolicitation agreements with each other, the responsible thing to do for your fellow STEM workers is to call the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and let them know that the Apple/Google/etc. settlement didn't achieve its intended effect.

The type of "no-solicit" that bfstein is talking about is very different from the one you're referring to. The no-solicit contracts that are common in Silicon Valley mean that you, as an ex-employee, cannot directly approach a current employee that you know there and offer them a job at your current employer. The no-solicits that they got in trouble with in the HTEAL were where the company's HR department refused to approach employees at other tech companies. The former is a contract between you and your employer, which is legal and enforceable. The latter was a verbal contract between competitors to the detriment of their employees, which is illegal.

In practice, what most big companies do is they ask incoming employees for the names and personal contact info (and only that) of good employees that they have worked with in the past, and then pass that info on to HR, for a corporate recruiter to make the initial contact. Has the same effect, but no contracts are broken, since the corporation does all the soliciting.

Those contract clauses would be void in California.

Why?

Section 16600: http://www.tradesecretsnoncompetelaw.com/2014/05/articles/no...

(just read the 2nd paragraph. the rest of the article makes the rather obvious point that, if you solicit based on confidential company information, 16600 won't save you.)

This article (and most of the rest of the information I found on the Internet) is referring to solicitation of customers, not solicitation of employees. The few sources I found [1][2] indicate that non-solicitation agreements for employees are very much enforceable, but only if the employee directly reaches out (if the current employee contacts a former coworker about a job, that's legal, and ditto for the former employee's new employer).

[1] http://www.pashalaw.com/legally-poaching-employees-company-a...

[2] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/understanding-nonsoli...

It's entirely standard at tech companies to have a non-solicitation clause in employment contracts that prohibits soliciting other employees up through a fixed period (e.g., one year) after you leave.

IANAL but I did some research on this and to the best of my understanding these are perfectly legal and enforceable in California.

That would be career suicide though.

Not entirely sure about the back story of Chris Lattner joining Tesla. But according to Techcrunch,

    Gross first found his way to Apple after Cue, formally called Greplin, 
    was acquired by the company for $40 million back in 2013 for its 
    predictive search capabilities. After spending the last three years in 
    Cupertino, Gross was ready to get back to his entrepreneurial roots.

It's possible that agreement during that acquisition Gross has a 3 year vesting period and it's not very surprising that some founders leave after certain stock vesting events. This is purely my speculation but it's possible. And the timing of it might just be a coincidence.

Lattner was indeed THE lead programmer of Swift, but Gross was A Director working on Machine Learning not THE guy in charge of company wide machine learning efforts ("Director" at Apple basically means second level manager).

Sorry this is off-topic, but I really dislike the overuse of the word "disingenuous" in tech discussions. It means you think the person is being insincere or duplicitous in what they are saying. It's much more likely that they just have a different opinion than you.

Questioning a person's sincerity is unproductive and usually unnecessary. It makes discussions needlessly personal and unpleasant.

> It means you think the person is being insincere or duplicitous in what they are saying.

That was exactly what I meant to say. I felt that he was making presenting a positive spin on a tech company he likes.

Anyone that spins a story that they know they are spinning are being "disingenuous" to themselves.

Someone could just as easily say you are presenting a negative spin on a tech company you dislike. It doesn't make for very interesting or productive discussion.

> It doesn't make for very interesting or productive discussion.

So what your saying is Hacker News isn't interesting when two biggish names leave a company for other companies? Some of us think it is significant. The reply was someone talking about my disuse of an english word. I replied that was exactly what I intended to use.

I can't seem to figure out if your defending another person or attacking me or both/neither.

I agree. When is this exodus at Apple going to end? Maybe they saw the next set of products and said "meh".

"Naive" might be the word you're looking for. And indeed, whenever important people leave, it is always significant. In fact, it can be significant even when they're not important at all. But you do need to wait a year to find out whether it makes a difference!

You might be surprised at who can leave without ultimately causing a problem.

Based on Apple's performance in machine learning, I would say some change in management has long been warranted.

You really can't say losing top engineers is like losing a file clerk. Granted, engineers aren't EVERYTHING and there is more talent than a handful of people. I wouldn't call losing these people company emergencies, but they're different dimensions from losing an employee in a commodity position.

So? Let's say Apple has 500 "top engineers". What will losing two mean? Probably nothing.

True true, but I'll spout off this: I hope it works out to some key decision makers realizing they need to rethink somethings - purely as a thing I wish would happen.

Losing two publicly is signaling. The very fact people are talking loudly about leaving apple is a sign of apple's weakness.

Lattner isn't talking loudly. He's barely talking about it at all. His only announcement about it was a brief aside in an email about a change in the Swift open source leadership.

Engineers are not simply interchangeable. Their expertise and experience are a very important part of who they are. A lead engineer can have a significant impact on the direction of a company, even one the size of Apple.

When a important engineer leaves, sometimes a lot more end up following. Or at least their team members more open to looking at other offers.

That'll be the interesting thing.

Lattner was in the top few of the world in his research and what he created, not just one among Apple's "top 500".

9 women can't make a baby in a month

not yet at least

Not sure why parent is getting downvotes for a more gender-counterbalanced quip about The Mythical Man Month, which is entirely relevant to this discussion.

Well, one is physically impossible while the other is theoretically improbable. So there's that.

It makes a difference. Probably a big one.

Individuals with experience in specialized areas and in leading in those areas can make a large impact in any company (their own or otherwise). How can you assume that losing individuals making a large impact wouldn't have an impact itself?

Considering that he's becoming a partner at YC, you'd think he was a high-value employee, or could have become one should have they retained him. Seems like a big loss to me.

Quotes a number that is 87% retail employees: Calls parent post "Disingenuous"

Greplin was neat, but Gross had only been an employee for a couple years, and he arrived at Apple after a low-dollar acquisition. This is probably just the end of his earn-out.

I'd be surprised to learn that this was a strategic blow to Apple.

As an Apple shareholder, there have been multiple red flags in the last 6 months, this is yet just another.

- Missing deadlines of product realeases.

- Seriously getting product design wrong and missing what users want. See Apple Watch, See iPhone 7, See MacBook Pro.

- Tim Cook being passive and an operations guy with no founder vision or drive.

- Failure to acquire new and innovate companies, instead doubling down on "strange" investments such as Didi Chuxing, and Softbank (both 1 billion).

I've been a huge Apple supporter and "fanboy", but the signs are starting to really add up. Soon enough the finance guys will start to see the patterns as well and there may be a significant correction.

Most good points. One I'd object to: "Failure to acquire new and innovate companies"

Acquiring innovative companies can be a good sign for innovative buyers. (Cisco was a machine at adding to it's product lines) For non-innovative companies, it's a death knell.

I'd rather see them acquire small and scrapy 10-100 people companies, though those people and founders would probably leave once their options fully vest after acquisition.

Missing what Apple Watch users want?

It seems for the most part that these are the most common issues: it isn't a phone replacement (no cellular connectivity) and the battery life is terrible.

For me as a Watch owner the battery life could be better but I don't want or have a need for it to have a cellular connection.

Just curious about how the product design of the watch is seriously wrong (same with the iPhone 7 other than it lacking a headphone jack).

As an Apple shareholder, this seems like a bunch of vague gripes.

- Apple has missed plenty of ship dates in the past; I refer you to the Saga Of The White iPhone.

- The Watch is selling well (dominating its category), iPhone 7 selling well (same), new MacBook is too early to tell.

- No drive? I wonder how well-informed you are if you think Tim Cook has no drive. He's not a product guy but contrary to popular belief, a CEO does not necessarily need to be.

- FoundationDB? Tuplejump? Turi?

I appreciate your points and I've been mostly ignoring the posts here and on social media constantly complaining about the new MacBook Pro. Howerver, as a whole there are signs things may be heading downward for Apple.

> The Watch is selling well (dominating its category), iPhone 7 selling well (same), new MacBook is too early to tell.

Apple Watch revenue barely shows up on their 10Q and 10K (see the mysterious other category), it is basically a non-factor to their performance and stock. I question why they even released the watch. iPhone actually is not selling as well as expected, they have cut orders[1] multiple times. There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.

FoundationDB was acquired in 2015 nearly 2 years ago. The others I can't speak too, but doesn't seem like it will make any impact. Think about this, Apple could and should have acquired either NetFlix or Tesla if they wanted too either last year or the year before... Now, both are too large and expensive for Apple to buy.

[1] - https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+cuts+iphone+orders

> There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.

Without any data to back the claim up, I'm reasonably sure this is just a loud, extremely small, minority. There are some things wrong with the new MacBook Pros, but, in my opinion, they are still, very likely, the best laptops out there.

Then there is Consumer Report not recommended the MacBook Pro for the first time ever! Today, Apple claimed there was a bug in Safari[1] which caused the very poor battery life in their report. Sounds very fishy.

[1] - http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14225716/apple-macbook-pro...

Agreed. Apple's rebuttal does sound very fishy.

I'd love to hear how Consumer Report managed to get a nearly 20-hour battery life result in one of their tests, though.

It doesn't sound fishy at all, that was the most obvious explanation right off the bat. The battery was inconsistent when Safari was running, but consistent when Chrome was used in its place. That's a massive neon sign pointing to a bug in Safari causing problems, and loads of people said this as soon as the report came out.

Six and a half years ago, Steve Jobs literally told people to hold the iPhone 4 in a better way to keep it from losing reception. Software is hard. Hardware is harder. Doesn't sound fishy at all to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/25/ipho...

I postponed a purchase of a fully loaded 13 inch model because of the lack of compelling enhancements (not sold on the bar) and these reports of battery life issues likely mean I will not make the purchase at all. At least 3 people I know are in the same boat and could have purchased at launch. While purely anecdotal and selection bias (all of us work in tech), but that's close to $10k in sales right there.

Best case, I'll skip this generation, but I'm strongly considering razer blade stealth + core.

I'm in dire need for an upgrade, too, and have been broken up about the fact that there is no dGPU-free option this time around. As well as the battery life issues, which probably are at least tangentially related to the dGPU.

If there was any clarity as to when we could expect a new MBP, I'd very strongly consider waiting. But otherwise, I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet on the current one, mainly because of the keyboard (entirely subjective, but I very much like it), and the screen (just as subjective). Anecdotally, I've seen a reasonable number of people say that the new MBPs run cooler and quieter, which, to me, is very appealing in a laptop.

As far as TouchBar goes: while playing with it at the store, I found some reasonably cute uses that might offset the loss of function keys, such as the seek-bar for Picture-in-Picture or AirPlay videos. And, of course, TouchID.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if at all feasible – definitely wait for a refresh. But, personally, after taking the time to think about it, I've found sufficient reasons to upgrade even to the 2016 model.

That's just the thing - my upgraded '12 15 inch MBP with 16GB RAM can last me until the chassis give out. To help with weight while traveling, I've been using an iPad + VPS for coding.

Switching back to Linux no longer feels like a downgrade after a year of VIM over SSH.

Had my new rMBP+TB machine for a month now, and I seriously can't see any use of the Touchbar that makes a difference to me. I simply don't ever look up there. Its not useful in bed - when laying down with laptop on lap, I can't even see the Touchbar screen.

So to me its a near-total useless 'feature' that has the potential to be reverted in the next generation. Unless I see a really killer app for it, I'll just continue ignoring it - and one of the reasons I may not see it, is that Apple are discouraging developers from using it as a display and requiring, rather, that it be used as a control surface. If I had an RSS feed on the thing, I'd find it a lot more useful - but Apple have a policy against that sort of thing. This seems like a broken policy, to me, though ..

> Apple Watch revenue barely shows up on their 10Q and 10K (see the mysterious other category), it is basically a non-factor to their performance and stock.

It usually takes a few iterations for an Apple product before it becomes successful. The iPhone, iPod, and iPad all had pretty weak sales for a few years before they take off. I say it's too early to judge the success or failure of the Apple Watch.

> iPhone actually is not selling as well as expected, they have cut orders[1] multiple times.

There have been reports of Apple cutting iPhone orders basically every year. People somehow seem to forget that.

> There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.

The Mac line is what I'm actually worried about. I think we'll see this year how they see the future of the Mac. My guess is that they are to switch to their own ARM based processors, especially now when Microsoft is developing ARM support for Windows. Perhaps not this year but not too far into the future.

> Missing deadlines of product realeases.

Remember the white iPhone 4? Hell, I remember the time during the switch from PowerPC to Intel meant you couldn't get your hands on an iMac for a month or two (late 2005).

> [...] missing what users want. See Apple Watch, See iPhone 7, See MacBook Pro.

Recently purchased the iPhone 7 after having stuck with a 5S for three years. I've got to say it's an excellent phone and I don't understand the whingeing. You get headphones and an adapter in box which works fine with my other headphones, though I stick with the supplied lightning cable ones. The shallow depth of field pictures it takes makes me feel like I've got an SLR with a prime lens in my pocket wherever I go.

I've played with the new MBP and it felt more Star Trek than any touchscreen laptop I've used. The NVMe storage in it largely negates the need for more than 16gb RAM.

> Tim Cook being passive and an operations guy with no founder vision or drive.

I'd say his passion for user privacy and commentary on his sexuality has shown him to be someone who cares for peoples rights. A good attitude to have when you're the CEO of a tech giant.

> doubling down on "strange" investments such as Didi Chuxing, and Softbank (both 1 billion).

Softbank completed a $31 Billion purchase of ARM recently. Still thinking Apple shouldn't have put a $1 billion shoe in the door? If memory serves they were also the first major distributor of iPhones in Japan when NTT Docomo were more interested in pushing flip phones.

> I'd say his passion for user privacy and commentary on his sexuality has shown him to be someone who cares for peoples rights.

He's not running for office he running a public company. As a shareholder those things are not priorities, but to him they are. Thus the problem I have.

And so you ignored the larger point that he's more than capable of making smart investments like Softbank who now own ARM, similar to Apple's prior investment in Imagination Technologies Group who design the GPUs for the A-series SOCs. Apple was first out the door with a 64-bit ARM chip in a smartphone - they need this investment to stay at the front of the pack. It also helps to invest in a company that shuttles more iPhones than any other distributor in a market as difficult and lucrative as Japan.

Getting back to my comment you quoted -- given the growing concern over user privacy, being in the position where you can serve both users who care AND those who don't is a very nice position to be in. His being gay while growing up in a conservative state no doubt influenced his desire to protect users privacy. The culture of the company is important if it's to attract new talent.

Choosing to take (or not take) a position on protecting people's rights is part of running a public company. This sort of thing shapes Apple's brand, makes a difference in recruiting, makes some employees feel more valued (and others less so) and so on in all sorts of other little ways. Tim Cook may be doing this well or badly, but either way making these choices is absolutely part of his job.

i bought an iphone 7 specifically because it protected user's privacy a bit more than android phones. so i wouldn't say they don't matter at all. to some people they do.

There are plenty of companies who will compromise their customers to make a buck, why not invest in them? As a human, I'm glad Tim has priorities other than greed.

>he shallow depth of field pictures it takes makes me feel like I've got an SLR with a prime lens in my pocket wherever I go.

I hope you are joking here. Even the cheapest SLR with some cheap lens produce better results atm. It's a fun feature to use, but nowhere near the SLR, even when using in perfect light conditions.

> Even the cheapest SLR with some cheap lens produce better results atm.

Perhaps in terms of resolution and rounder bokeh but you need to understand the effect of separating the subject from the background is the important part. Being able to do it quickly and without carrying a body and lens is incredibly valuable.

Remember: The best camera is...

okay but this is not 'I've got an SLR with a prime lens in my pocket wherever I go.'

Resolution, noise, soapy effect on border of the object separated from the background etc.

'Being able to do it quickly' is exactly what I called fun. No point comparing in to SLR of any price range.

> okay but this is not 'I've got an SLR with a prime lens in my pocket wherever I go.'

You missed the important part of that quote: it takes makes me feel like ...meaning it was a subjective statement.

Here was a comparison Ars Technica did with the iPhone 7 camera and a couple of Sony DSLR models. Of course the iPhone isn't going to win outright but I thought it held its own fairly well and the picture quality was quite good

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/mini-shootout-can-iph...

Well, I wasn't saying it has bad camera, just not nearly as good as any SLR with any lens, not for now at least.

>> makes me feel like I've got an SLR

It doesn't matter very much what the objective performance is. Grandparent feels like he's got an SLR and there lies most of the value.

Okay, maybe I've misunderstood the initial comment.

>Seriously getting product design wrong and missing what users want. See See iPhone 7

Hmm...after reading [1] and [2], it seems that at least some users wanted the iPhone 7.

[1] http://bgr.com/2016/12/22/iphone-7-popularity-revenue-record...

[2] http://bgr.com/2016/10/20/iphone-7-sales-figures-september-q...

>Tim Cook being passive and an operations guy with no founder vision or drive.

I'd disagree with this, he has vision and drive he's just not got a great vision and sees no value in the Mac line yet pushed out weak products like the Watch and the iPad Pro.

iPad Pro might have made sense if launched at the start but launched when all the pro apps have left the iPad platform it just seems like he doesn't even understand his own ecosystem.

Thankfully they seem to have dropped the fantasy of shipping a car.

Based on fanboys complaining, a lot.

With all due to respect to the prestige, draw, presumed, current, or pending wild profitability, power and influence of YCombinator, why isn't anyone here talking about Eddy Cue? Don't people leave managers, not employers? Is he too much of an institution at Apple?

I am seriously disappointed by Apple's lack of effort into excellence at this point. Personal example, I turned my iPhone settings into Swedish to help me and there are clearly some problems with translation. Another example, not listening to the needs of the developer community and failing to evolve its Macbooks into computational powerhouses (maybe they are just hiding a next generation of élite hardware – going to spin off a not-Macbook, smartly staunch in the face of fear of cannibalizing their market. Yeah, maybe that's coming...

Where is the guy who proved a phone could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium and drawing attention to the bubbles

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the ghost of Steve Jobs. I feel like the problem comes top-down. Without a leader to install the culture of excellence, the culture degrades into memes of the culture, eventually signifying nothing. We saw this through the return of Ray Dalio. Maybe Michael Dell will "Make Dell Great Again" too? I think there's a small opportunity in a line of hats that say "Make Apple Great Again"

No, but seriously: what's the deal with Eddy Cue?

If you don't like your iPhone translation, then file some bugs: http://bugreport.apple.com

I imagine most developers do, but his point stands. Here's the summary from my latest:

> My two new MacBook Pros came with SIP disabled.

And the one before it:

> I reported a related bug (#19495560) where the FileVault on a brand new MacBook does not finish encrypting. I think this is a related bug, where, when switching between the tabs on the Security & Privacy pane of the System Preferences freezes the screen.

The majority of bugs I've filed are with brand new machines, and that's not even counting all the UI sloppiness that isn't worth reporting. The machines are usable, a heck of alot more so than I remember Windows or Linux being, but the attention to having details right and having things always-work is absolutely gone.

Just this week, I tried the new AirBuds in the store: connects magically, but music app stops being able to do audio and needs restarting. Guy trying them next to me can't get his to pair with his phone at all until he toggles airplane mode off and on.

Earlier this weekend, needed to restart my phone for live photos to work (photos was playing the first preview animation, but not the whole one, even after restarting the app).

A few weeks back, a friend asks me to get the wifi password she typed into her phone onto her laptop. Easy, right? Just walk her through setting up iCloud keychain. Nope! Sync simply doesn't happen (yet? who knows!), and there's no way to force it. Wasn't surprised, but still disappointed.

I only see one bug number but four different bugs being described here. Where's the rest?

>Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the ghost of Steve Jobs.

You certainly are.

Apple (well, NeXT) took Unix, slapped on a nice hardware accelerated graphics layer, and then made sure it worked (on the web, in the office suite, in the mail client, in the music player, in the video player, etc). You can make the mobile version of that product in a month now, army of one style, and come up with something that's better for whatever corner of the market you intend to target - even if it's just your friends or your countrymen.

One trick ponies have a hard time learning new tricks, and Apple has always been a one trick pony. For now their mobile product is still the best - and enough of their competitors are chasing stupid ideas that they can probably coast for another 5 years. We'll see what happens long term.

Apple is the largest (market cap) public U.S. company and within the world's top 10 by other measurements. We have empirical evidence they are going great, I don't think they need an ignorant slogan which presumes they aren't.

But then again, by all measurements the U.S. was doing great too, yet here we are, winding up our doomsday clocks.

Given his age, how did Daniel Gross break into machine learning? i.e. where did he learn the theory ? Is he purely self taught?

What's with the "given his age" part? Is he too young or too old to learn something?

Most accomplished individuals in machine learning have obtained PhDs at one of the leading academic research institutions. I think the OP was wondering if Gross took a different route, since he seems on the younger side.

What has he done with machine learning? He sounds like a good coder, but not really an ML heavy-weight...

He's self-taught. See http://www.inc.com/articles/2011/03/how-19-year-old-daniel-g... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_(search_engine).

I really liked Greplin a lot, it was super useful for its time. I kind of lost track of it after the Cue transition. Does it still exist? Does that product category still exist even?

When they were acquired there was talk in the press of integrating some of the technology into Siri and/or the iWatch but I don't know what actually happened.

Unclear why the official YC press release is not the primary post for this event: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13368446

I've met Daniel and Robby and was particularly impressed by Daniel. It's not a surprise to me that YC chose him for this role.

Congrats Daniel! All the best.

edit: I'm deleting this thread. I don't want to hijack Daniel Gross's hiring thread with negativity. Sorry.

Don't you think such people would be interested in investing on their own rather than part of YC as their partner? I don't know the revenue sharing approach that YC uses with their partners but I don't believe that it is good enough to make successful entrepreneurs who built a company with >500 employees to join them. Someone with more insider knowledge can comment.

Why would someone that accomplished join this group? Peter Thiel started the Thiel Fellowship to do his own program.

Peter Thiel is also a YC Partner

Why does it have to be someone who both created a business and scaled it to > 500? The skill-sets on founding vs. scaling are different and very few leaders possess both and had the drive to scale the company they founded to be that big.

You don't need partners great at scaling profitable companies from 100 to 500 employees.

You need partners who know how to help a company go from two to ten employees and raise a first round of funding.

I'm a part-time partner, and I run a company with >500 employees, but I basically draw entirely on my first 2-3 years of experience when giving advice.

It would be interesting to hear about your experience making this transition, how you did it and how you would have done it differently knowing what you know now. Do you have any published content you can point to?

> Daniel Gross of Apple

Is this a modern nobility title? xD

Just big shots changing chairs.

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